


he may go on choking

by adelheid



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Pining, Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 18:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18481987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adelheid/pseuds/adelheid
Summary: 8x01 compliant. Jon answers Sansa's question.





	he may go on choking

**Author's Note:**

> could I resist writing about their private scene, drawing it out and making myself suffer?  
> no, i could not. enjoy the pain!

The candles seem to stutter for a moment. _They are consumed from within,_ she reflects.  Sansa shudders at the thought of it: slowly melting, slowly losing substance. She rejects the possibility.

The question must come.

“Did you bend the knee to save the North or because you love her?”  

There are only two possible paths, that of honor and desire, and the two are similar in their absolutes.

Jon inhales, never taking his eyes off her. It’s the longest breath he’s ever held but the air is rarefied, as if he were still trekking beyond the Wall, deep in the shadow of ice.

Sansa waits for him to answer. She will not stir.

She can read the guilt in his eyes, the incriminating self-mortification that she’s always cherished and despised about him.

Jon flinches. He lets his eyes fall, like child’s marbles, on the floor.

“I rode a dragon by myself for the first time today,” he says slowly, as if speaking to himself.

Sansa blinks. “Yes. I believe _all_ of Winterfell saw the two of you.”

Jon smiles wistfully and something in her bristles. Is he recalling the escapade fondly? Of course he is.

“It felt - like _nothing_ else in the world. My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t breathe.”

Sansa thinks of small birds taking their flight, she thinks of nights in King’s Landing when she dreamt of that same freedom. Foolishly, there is moistness in the corner of her eye.

“We flew far, farther than I thought. We stopped by a hidden waterfall, still unfrozen in the middle of winter. Dany said we might live there, unknown, for a thousand years.”

Sansa wants to tell him to stop. Perhaps he’s answered her already. Perhaps there is no point prying any further. It should not hurt, it should only disappoint. But it hurts, _oh it hurts._

“I japed and smiled and kissed her…” Jon trails off, thick, cloying warmth in his voice. “It was a pretty picture.”

Sansa recoils. She recalls, suddenly, saying the same words - the very same - to Littlefinger. She looks into the shadowed corners of the room, searching for ghosts.

Nothing.

“But all the while I was only thinking of that feeling, of riding a dragon. Like nothing else in the world,” he adds, lifting his eyes to her, smiling with half his mouth.  

Sansa parts her lips. Then shuts them.  “You were in awe. I can’t say I fully share your admiration.”

He chuckles. “You don’t have to. I think I’ve carried this feeling inside me for a while.”

Sansa fiddles with her needle absently, nervously. “What feeling?”

“I don’t know...call it familiarity. When I rode that dragon all I could think was, _I’ve felt this way before._ But then...no, I thought it _was_ like nothing else...I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“You aren’t making much sense,” she agrees, troubled, even _anxious_ , though she can’t name the reason. “Jon, what’s the matter?”

She leans forward to touch his arm.

Jon looks at her with the self-denial she has often misread as brotherly frustration.

“Then I realized. Riding that dragon had felt like the first time I saw you at Castle Black. I kept - I kept thinking about it. There was the waterfall...and it was beautiful... but all I could see was our family...me and you holding tight in the courtyard. Do you understand me?”

Sansa looks at him in frozen disbelief. She drops her hand, lets it slide down to his elbow.  “I - I think I do.”

_Yet I can’t be sure._

She tries again. “It’s good to hear you speak like - like that, Jon. Arya will be glad of it too.”

Jon laughs shortly, almost bitterly. He takes back the hand she’s pulled away. He spreads her fingers slowly against his hand.

“I don’t think I’ll tell her.”

“Why not?”

Jon draws circles  in the middle of her palm. Perhaps it’s the pattern of the dead, the spiral of nothingness. This time, she ought to be sure. He’ll show her. “I think you know why.”

Sansa feels tremendous pain.

She would like to pull away. There’s always been this tentative dance in the unspoken sea between them, but it’s never threatened to drown them. She knows that he left Winterfell too soon for their feelings to become feelings.

What did the absence do? Breed monsters?

He raises her hand slowly, her fingers bathed in candlelight. He stares at his capture, examines it with an eerie intensity.

Then he presses his mouth to her knuckles.

Sansa closes her eyes briefly, a silent cry for mercy.

He does not close his eyes.

When she opens them again, he’s letting her hand fall, like the petals of a rare flower that does not belong in winter.

Sansa regrets not having worn her gloves. She can’t imagine ever putting them on.

She does not remember his mouth being so warm. She has never felt this sort of tangibility.

“Don’t worry, I’ll not speak of it again,” he says, withdrawing, becoming distant and formal. “Not unless you ask me about my love for anyone.”

Sansa clutches her own hand, helplessly.

“Will you?” he demands. “Ask me again?”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” He nods, as if that’s settled. As if nothing’s happened.

He makes to leave.

“Jon.”

Her brother pauses in the doorway.

“I - I’m so glad you’re home now. With me.”

His gloved hand presses against the door. There is a suspended moment, a moment of quiet despair. He clenches his jaw.

“With you,” he says, echoes almost. And leaves quickly, afraid to say or even think more.

  


 

Sansa drops back in her chair with a dry sob.

She presses a hand to her mouth and keeps it there for a long time, but no tears come. She is stunned and relieved and terrified.

She wants to scream it out, but no - the candles might hear her. They burn, consuming and being consumed. 

She shivers inside her furs.

  


 

Jon cannot stand himself. He rushes down into the crypts, seeking air, seeking something beyond himself.

He was a fool to speak. But he was driven to it, always driven by her.

He never knew what he was going to say until he did.

How awful to discover he’s always loved her. How awful when he’s promised himself to another, when he has staked everyone’s survival on his easy affection for the Targaryen queen. How different is fondness from passion.

He’s never wanted passion. Passion is for bastards, base-born.

Sam finds him in gloomy meditation. He’s lighting a candle to his father.

His honest friend might think he is merely observing filial duties.

But Jon is trying to remind himself he is Ned’s son. Her brother. His only right is to protect her and to do so, he must even grow to hate her, for the alternative is to expire with longing for her and to doom them both.

He can already hear the song sung in his name.

_I will ride dragons and think no more of fire-kissed hair._

He chants it in his head, chants it until he chokes on the hair.

It’s Sam who wrests him away from the brink.

Sam who tells him, in so many words, that he may go on choking.

Jon shudders in shock, in horror, and relief.


End file.
